American Gigolo, review: another pointless remake, this time with added sleaze

The origin story is a key component of the Hollywood economy. If you liked this once, goes the bean-counting rationale, you’ll like it twice. So here’s one we made earlier, again. It must explain why the world has been saddled with another look at American Gigolo (Paramount+).

To recap, if you weren’t there in 1980, the movie was from the exciting pen of Paul Schrader, who had previously scripted Taxi Driver. He directed his own story of a male prostitute who finds himself fitted up for murder until his lover, the only woman he doesn’t want paying to have sex with, sacrifices her marriage to provide him with an alibi. The role of Julian Kay introduced the snake hips, bruised cheekbones and pebble-dark pupils of Richard Gere to a grateful, goggle-eyed public.

The producer was Jerry Bruckheimer, who has also just brought back Top Gun. More than 40 years on (though Bruckheimer first announced the project back in 2014), he has exhumed American Gigolo as a 10-part TV drama and you do have to wonder: erm, why?

It’s clear why we were vouchsafed another look at Vito Corleone or Batman or Darth Vader, to name but three icons of popular culture who have been given the origin-story treatment. But a semi-remembered sex worker from 42 years back somehow doesn’t feel like a worthy candidate for cryogenic defrosting.

Schrader, beyond a credit for creating the characters (actually just two of them), is on furlough for this one. The writing and directing is now taken on by David Hollander, who at a guess is no relation of Tom. He has inserted cellphones to bring it up to the present day but otherwise kept faith with a naff softcore aesthetic which is still very much essence of 1980: the pool, the flesh, the sleaze, the steam, the wheels, the pop.

Ah yes, the music. American Gigolo spawned Blondie’s propulsive hit Call Me, which returns as a reassuring kitemark of quality in the opening credits. Deborah Harry now croons over a montage of Julian (now played by Jon Bernthal) consorting with various catalogue models who look as if they probably don’t need to pay for such privileges. In the twisted fever dreams of your male TV exec, this is what female empowerment must look like. Way to go, girls!

In this reimagined version, Julian discovers he was framed for murder after 15 years in the clink. The minute he’s out he makes contact with figures from his past, including his old flame Michelle Stratton (played by Lauren Hutton in the original, now incarnated by Gretchen Mol). He’s soon caught up not only in his own cold case but a new murder involving someone who, by the look of the boy who’s playing him, may well be his own son.

Meanwhile – and this is the origin story bit – flashbacks reveal that Julian fetched up in the sex-work sector when his mother, having pimped him out as a boy to a neighbour to pay the rent, eventually sold him to a French madame. We see her training him up in the erotic arts as if making him practise his scales.

It’s as subtle as a brick wrapped in cement dunked in concrete. Also it’s horribly slow, even the sections that don’t unfold in actual slow motion. Bernthal, best known for The Walking Dead, is a dead ringer for Gere: he’s got the whisper and the strut, the mahogany buns and abs of teak. But all the best bits involve Rosie O’Donnell as a wisecracking detective called Sunday. She has seemingly barged in from another show altogether which, unlike this, might be great fun.